Photos from the late thirties and early forties

Yale recently created a site where you can search photos taken for the government in the thirties and forties.  There are some really great photos.   You can see some of the photos here. 

You can search this map by county.  Or you can search by photographer, location, and some other criteria.  Note that if you click the photos a second time, they are shown bigger.  Too bad you can't do a slide show....

This photo was taken in the county where I grew up by Arthur Rothstein.  He had a job with the federal government documenting life in America, especially the more remote places it seems.  He took a lot of photos in Rosebud County (Montana) where I grew up.  It was certainly remote.

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I grew up on the farm where my father's parents homesteaded in Rosebud County.  We didn't have sheep but I remember sheepherder's wagons like this.  I wanted very much to explore one but my mother was ag'in it.  I think she thought I would get lice or something worse.  I can't imagine living a cold Montana winter in one of these but I think they did.

This one shows a phone on a ranch in Rosebud county almost ten years before I was born.  Having a phone that early in Rosebud County is amazing to me.  Our closest access to a phone was twelve miles away at the local country store.  We didn't have a phone on the farm until sometime in the sixties.  I guess some parts of Rosebud County (like where I was) were more remote than others!

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